Huge ocean waves surged over the narrow strip of land that holds Cancun's resort hotels as Hurricane Wilma slammed into the Mexican mainland, where some 30,000 tourists huddled in hotels and shelters amid shrieking winds and shattering glass.
The eye of the Category 3 storm, which has already killed 13 people, first slammed into Cozumel Island -- the worst-hit, and now cut off -- and then headed north-northwest onto the mainland near the beach town of Playa de Carmen, south of Cancun.
Sea water began reclaiming Cancun's hotel zone, built between the ocean and a lagoon; water stood several feet deep in the evacuated hotel zone.
"The water is crossing over from the sea into the lagoon," Quintana Roo Governor Felix Gonzalez Cantu, said.
Tourists and local residents at the Xbalamque Hotel, a downtown Cancun hostelry serving as shelter, listened in horror as windows blasted out, the wind howled and the building shook.
"I never in my life want to live through something like this," said cook Guadalupe Santiago, 27. "There are no words to describe it," she said.
Jan Hanshast, a tourist from Castle Rock, Colorado, stood in a water-and-debris filled hallway at the hotel.
"My son's starting to lose it. He's tired and hungry," Hanshast said.
As another howling burst of wind shook the building, he noted "hearing things like that doesn't help."
With 205kph winds, the US National Hurricane Center in Miami, Florida said the storm was "really clobbering" the areas around Cozumel and Cancun, where it blew down trees that crushed some cars.
Gonzalez Cantu called the destruction "tremendous," but officials didn't even expect to be able to reach Cozumel -- whose ferry service is out of commission -- until late yesterday, at the earliest, to assess the damage.
The slow-moving hurricane was expected to pound the area all day yesterday as it passed over the tip of the Yucatan peninsula; it was then expected to emerge into the Gulf of Mexico, curl around Cuba and sprint toward Florida.
The Hurricane Center said "a hurricane watch will likely be required for portions of central and southern Florida and the Florida keys later today."
"It's going to be a long couple of days here for the Yucatan Peninsula," said Max Mayfield, director of the Hurricane Center.
As the eye of the storm neared Cancun, officials loaded hundreds of evacuees into buses and vans and moved them to other shelters after a downtown cultural center suffered problems, apparently from ceiling tiles that threatened to collapse.
Hotels being used as shelters pushed furniture up against windows, but the force of the wind blasted through such improvised barriers.
Mexican President Vicente Fox said he planned to travel to the affected region as soon as possible.
The storm, inching along at 6kph, is expected to slam into Florida tomorrow, where emergency officials on Friday issued the first evacuation orders.
Mexico declared a state of emergency in an additional 55 townships on the Yucatan peninsula on Friday.
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